About Ravenmoon
View all posts by Ravenmoon
New pens posted!
Yes, it’s been a while, I know. Life has a way of being, well, life. But I have 19 new pens posted, and about 30 more (mostly Sheaffers…) still to come. That still leaves roughly 30-40 more as yet unphotographed, even without the folio of nearly 100 Chinese pens I picked up along the way. No, I will not be cataloging all of them! Perhaps I can get some photos of the lot.
In this update, several Conklin and Monteverde pens appear, along with a couple Deltas, a few miscellaneous brands, and two stunning custom pens from Atelier Lusso. I have photos ready of several more vintage odds and ends, and roughly 20 more vintage Sheaffers ready to post. Yet to be photographed are three Benus, and a handful of others from Lamy, TWSBI, etc.
There are also probably a couple dozen inks I haven’t swabbed yet, and a bunch of seals and….*sigh* See you soon, I hope!
A tale of an orange obsession….
So I won’t lie – one of my ‘grail pens’ was the Delta Dolce Vita. From the first time I got my grubby paws on a Fountain Pen Hospital catalog, I fell in love with that radiant orange, and the contrast with it and the black and silver cap & trim. From there began a quest for orange pens, since I could not afford a Delta. (Still really can’t afford the one I’d love, but there’s a lot of pens like that….)
Funny thing is, turns out that orange, black, and silver look is pretty easy to find. Below are (and I’m not telling you the order they’re in!) A Delta Dolce Vita, a Conklin ‘Orange Nights,’ a custom-made Atelier Lusso with sterling fittings, and a no-name Chinese (I’m assuming) pen that came to me in a batch lot, but I’m guessing could not have cost more than $10.00. Can you tell which it which?
Unless you know each pen intimately, it’s tough to tell, isn’t it? They all have clips and clip bands which sit below the top of the cap, they all have a silver trim ring at the end of the barrel, on what might or night not be a blind cap, and then there’s the lovely gleaming marbled orange resin! It’s not easy! OK, here’s the real order:
- Atelier Lusso custom-made Carina with sterling silver fittings, and a fire opal set in as the cap jewel.
- This is the Delta Dolce Vita Frederico, with a 14K nib, piston fill.
- Conklin Duragraph in Orange Nights, with a steel nib, converter fill.
- Chinese pen, probably a Jinhao our a Huashilai, steel nib, converter fill.
45 New Inks added & site revamp finished
Finally! I have finished the conversion for the site from straight HTML to a data-base driven site. I’m still adding the last few pens (mostly my modern Sheaffer pens), but otherwise it’s up and running.
 |
| A couple of swabs of J. Herbin’s 1670 Rouge Hematite, their first ‘shimmer’ offfering, and one of my all-time favorites! |
I’ve also added 45 new inks, including 6 of Diamine’s ‘Shimmer’ inks, and all five of the current J. Herbin 1670 shimmering inks. I have learned that shimmer inks are ridiculously hard to photograph in a way that does them justice, but I put my usual swab together with a more angled swatch to catch the light. Hopefully you’ll get the idea. At right is one of my attempts to capture the beauty of what remains on of my all time favorite inks, Herbin’s 1670 Rouge Hematite.
Also new: three inks by L`artisan Pastellier Callifolio, a relatively new brand that makes some lovely colors. I’ve also got two inks by Tekker, the sadly now-defunct company that let you design your own colors. Started by a couple of college students, they ended up getting overwhelmed by the response, and were unable to keep up. No word yet if someone has picked up on this, but I”d love to see the concept back in business!
Coming soon:
Look for more updates to the Modern Sheaffer page, and then several dozen (close to a hundred) new pen listings, vintage and modern, including a couple custom pieces, a few low-price Japanese & Chinese pens and more!
General update
I know it’s been over a year since I updated this. In part, it’s because Ive been working hard on developing a database to run the pen indexing part of the site. The blog part works beautifully, but adding every new pen by hand not only got unwieldy to do, it made for page that took way too long to load. So that’s been in progress. Ideally, I hope to offer more ways of viewing the pens you’re interested in, such as brand, nib, filler, date range, maybe even by color. But there are very few non-commercial packages to do this, so learning to construct it has been quite a battle. I think I’ve got the hang of it now, so look for things to start going live soon. At this point, it is mostly the (monumental) task of manually re-entering the info for each and every pen I own. Yikes! (There aren’t really any free tools for doing that either, I’ve looked!). So far it’s looking pretty good though! You can see what the new database driven pages will look like on the bottom left, where there are a few pages labeled (BETA).
Once it’s done, I will be adding a LOT of new pens and inks, several repair updates, and maybe even a page for all the vintage pencils I have also accumulated. So stay tuned!
New pen cabinet, and new pens coming soon
It’s been a busy summer, so I haven’t updated as much as I should. There’s a new batch or pens coming soon, as well as some long overdue ink swatches.
Meanwhile, I offer for your viewing pleasure these shots of my new pen cabinet (or curio, I suppose). The case itself came from my cousin, in a fantastic trade for a couple of pens.
(click to enlarge, of course!)
A Bit of a Mystery…
The pen is huge, with a gorgeous woodgrain ebonite body, a big ball-ended clip, and a big, smooth, wet 14K Warranted #8 nib. Not much flex, but it writes like silk. The section has a couple of dings, indicating the sac was changed (or someone tried to open it), but otherwise, it seems to be in amazing condition.
The cap reads “(The) Union.” The clip reads “Union” with “LM” in a circle on the rounded end of the clip. And of course, the nib reads as any Warranted nib would. (All images will open larger)
And that’s it. No barrel imprint, nothing. According to Richard Binder’s reference pages, Union was a sub-brand of Morrison, but the pens he describes look nothing like this one. However, it looks an awful lot like the pens here on this FPN thread: Diamond Point.
One fellow who collects pencils mentions a pen marked similarly, which seems to have been made by Diamond Point. (The entry is HERE, but beware, he refers to the pen part of the set as “one of those pesky pens I don’t collect,” so watch your blood pressure…)
So, pen maniacs; what do you know? Ever see a pen like this before?
First Batch of Pen Boxes are Ready
The cigar boxes I snagged a while ago have finally begun their transformation into stylish pen boxes! I have about six more to do once I get appropriate colors in the edging material to match both the box and the liner.
If you look at the black and red boxes in the front, you’ll see a band of red inside; that is a soft foam strip that helps keep the tray liner in place, provides a ‘bumper’ for any pens that might get jostled out of their grooves, and makes the whole think look more ‘finished.’ The red one in back (which is a stunning box; the photo doesn’t show enough of it to see here) has a red liner, but the red foam looks muddy next to the brilliant red liner, so I’m going to put a black band in that one instead. I have boxes with liners in blue and burgundy as well.
I’ve been using a couple of these myself, and they are great! I’ll be finishing the next batch in the next week, and posting them for sale soon. Drop a line if you’re interested!
For Sale: Laban “Nouveau” Set
Laban Sterling “Nouveau” FP/BP set in a gorgeous Art Nouveau pattern.
($175, negot.)
Converter fill (included). Steel Nib, B
I don’t know the exact model designation, and was unable to find this set online. The closest I found was the Maya (retails for about $180 for the FP, $130 for the BP, give or take depending on currency and such). It’s similar in looks to the Labrados, but I don’t think that one is sterling, and it looks like the black is enamel. I didn’t find this pattern in any case.
This set is definitely silver (and it does tarnish over time as one would expect), but I can’t tell if it’s a true overlay. The set is in near mint to fine condition. The only mark on the set is a small ding on the end of the BP (see photo). Close examination shows a few ‘drawer wear’ scuff-type marks, but they are not visible without magnification. I honestly don’t know much about this set, other than it’s a lovely writer, and the BP has the original Laban-branded refill, which writes (black).
I’m asking $175, but happy to entertain other offers, since I don’t have more details. Drop me an e-mail on the Contact Page if you’re interested!
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
I’ve revamped the site again!
I know, I just rebuilt this website, and I was really pleased with it. But I’ve been getting back into tinkering with my collection again, and doing some repairs, and adding a bunch (too many, really), of new pens…. My “News” page was getting way too big. I looked for some kind of blog extension that I could embed into the site, to no avail. So now I’m running the entire kit and caboodle (what does that mean, anyway?) via WordPress.
I don’t think I did too badly keeping the look and feel of the old site, and it’s running a little fast and leaner, too. So please, look ‘er over, kick the tires, see if I’ve missed anything!
And stay tuned: I have over a dozen new pens to add, and several new inks, including three from a brand that’s new to me: Callifolio out of France….
Two ‘franken-pens’ and a repair spree…
I’ve been on a bit of a repair spree lately, and here are the results! First three repair job are: an Arnold, an Eversharp Skyline, and a Wearever 2-in-1.
The black Wearever 2-in-1 was a real wreck, and it had been languishing in a box of parts for years. On a whim I dragged it out, and after a serious cleaning, and a new sac, it’s turned out to be a wonderful little pen! The nib (basic steel, once gold-plated) is far smoother than it has any right to be! And it cleaned up to a really smart, sort of deco-looking piece.
The Brown Skyline was pretty basic: new sac, a good cleaning and a polish. It’s provenance however, is more interesting. I found it, or rather its parts, in a $5 jar of assorted pen parts (mostly old ballpoints). What’s more, there was an extra nib, feed & section unti in the jar….
The Arnold, however is where things got interesting. It, too had been languishing for a few years, as the nib was pretty much hopeless. But it’s such a gorgeous body: look at that silver and crimson stripe! I fiddled with the nib, seeing if I could smooth it out, but it was really too far gone. THen I got to wondering…. I had that extra Skyline nib unit… Well, the nib was the wrong size for the feed, but, the section was almost a perfect fit. A bit of light sanding, and the Skyline section fit like it had always been there. A good polish all around, and my stylish Arnold now sports a lovely, smooth, 14K Eversharp nib!
 |
 |
| Left: Three of my repairs: Brown Eversharp Skyline, Black Deco Wearever Two-in-one, Arnold/Skyline Right: Closeup of the Skyline nib, feed & section on the Arnold pen. Looks perfect, doesn’t it? (Click to see larger images) | |
My next repair was another happy coincidence, of sorts. You may recall back in December I picked up a mixed lot of Sheaffers, including that fabulous Jade Flattop? Well, in that lot was a second Jade Flattop, badly discolored, and lacking a cap. It had a huge, gorgeous 14K nib, though, and I resolved I’d find a cap for it. Well, I sort of did….
Just the other day, I snagged another eBay lot (I am hooked on those batch lots – dangerous stuff, but then again, they’ve yielded some real prizes!). This lot had a couple of Sheaffer vac-fillers: a brown striated Balance and a brown Tucky, a green Lambert-Aiken, and a big black and pearl lever fill Balance completely without innards.
 |
 |
| Left: The pretty rough Balance body (shot from the eBay listing) Right: A new pen, the restored Balance barrel and cap, and the section & nib from the discolored flattop. (Click to see larger images) | |
Of course, it wasn’t long before I thought of that big fat gold nib looking for a home… and once again, by happy coincidence, it fit with only a quick sanding of the nipple to match the taper of the Balance. The barrel was a real mess to clean, though; the sac seemed to have burst and adhered to the inside of the barrel in a crusty, inky, mess. Yuk! But after a pretty intense bout of poking and scritching, a new sac, and a thorough polish, I have a fantastic pen!
